Monday, 30 April 2012

I am still suffering from that horrendous interference and am no nearer tracking down its source.

I have made another video showing the effects. As I mentioned before the signal seems to build in intensity and tends to drift frequency and then fade away. I know the FUNCube dongle filtering can be susceptible to out of band signals and images especially in the VHF but the video shows the same interference on a normal receiver with a different antenna.

Interestingly I have monitored a few local amateurs also mentioning problems with noise that has been affecting them, one even described an "annoying pulsing sound"

Monday, 16 April 2012

There are some really nice visible passes of the International Space Station at the moment over the UK in the evening. I have tried a couple of times to video them but don't have the right equipment. My ancient Digital8 camcorder just isn't sensitive enough when the sky is dark, the image is just a mass of noise!

However saying that last night one of the passes was just after sunset and did manage to get something.

It was a real pity I couldn't video the later pass as the sky was dark and clear of clouds and the ISS was amazingly bright as it passed across a star filled sky.

Thursday, 12 April 2012

Today is Cosmonautics Day in Russia, a holiday that celebrates the first manned space flight made on April 12, 1961 by the 27-year-old Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin circled the Earth for 1 hour and 48 minutes aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft. Coincidentally, it is also the anniversary of the first Space Shuttle launch that occurred 20 years after the historic Vostok flight.

Tonight on what is known as Yuri's Night cosmonauts on board the International Space Station made contact with St Petersburg in Russia.

The pass of the ISS over the UK starting aat 20:28 UTC was extremely bright and visible despite the cloudy sky and as it passed into Eastern Europe the contact began on 145.800MHz. I managed to capture some very scratchy audio with my FUNCube Dongle and the loft antenna.